BROTHERS (12 SONS, 12 MOONS, 12 MOODS)
An immersive concert experience with spoken word and video art.
This international project explores the biblical 12 brothers/12 tribes in all possible ways – musically, verbally and visually, creating a modern and poetic interpretation of the story.
Soloists: trumpet – Sergey Nakariakov (France), trombone, electronics & shofar – Elias Faingersh (Sweden)
Composers: Uri Brener (Israel) & Elias Faingersh (Sweden)
Text: Keren Klimovsky (Sweden)
Video art – Jenny Filipetti (Italy/USA)
Light design – Imre Zsibrik (Sweden)
The show was first performed in October 2021 with the string orchestra of Dagestan’s National Philharmonic (conductor – Zarifa Abdullaeva).
With support from: The Russian-Jewish Congress
DO YOU KNOW WHAT LOVE IS?
A musical performance that makes the impossible possible
In collaboration with The Baltic House Theater (St. Petersburg, Ryssland)
“Do You Know What Love Is?” is a tragicomedy about people who do strange things that fall out of the accepted norms of society, yet those illogical, futile acts are necessary to keep the world going… Their misdemeanors are viewed as crimes in the eyes of the law, yet completely justified by rules of love and humanity. 4 actors are playing a total of 17 roles, which contributes to the carnival feeling in this colorful, visually appealing show. The musician, whose music ties together the 3 different novellas, sees (or, rather, hears) the true essence of things: whenever people speak, he hears the music that plays inside every person – the “inner melody”/”inner sound”. In this performance music and sound play a leading and even an overbearing role as the main means of theatrical expression. This is, in fact, a “composer’s theater”.
The performance premiered in December of 2017 and continued playing sold out shows up until the covid-19 pandemic on the big stage of the Baltic House Theater in St. Petersburg. The two guest shows at Bastionen (Malmo) in 2018 were sold out as well.
Best director award at the Rostov-na-donu comedy Festival (2019).
Actors – Natalja Parashkina, Svetlana Obidina, Andrej Arkhipov, Denis Gilmanov/Arseny
Vorobjov, Elias Faingersh (musician)
Director & composer – Elias Faingersh
Playwright – Keren Klimovsky
Stage Design – Irina Birulja
Costume design – Maria Sedyh
Light design – Konstantin Udovichenko
With support from: Musikverket, Konstnärsnämnden
GRANDFATHER
An interactive, musical show in collaboration with Teater InSite
(Malmö, Sweden)
They were both drafted during World War II, both left their pregnant wives behind. One fought on the German side, the other – on the Soviet side. One died in a prison camp next to Minsk, the other survived the war and came home. One has never met his daughter, the other saw his daughter for the first time when she was four. One left nothing other than a few old photographs, the other left a thick bundle of letters that he wrote to his wife from the war zone. Many years later, their grandchildren – Matthias Hahne Thornbjörnsson and Elias Faingersh – make an attempt to make sense of their family histories. Relying on facts and documents, on information and its absence, they help each other by playing out scenes from their families’ lives. This is a performance about a search for ‘truth’ and about the possibility of such a quest: can you fill the void created by a person’s absence? Can you really know a person, even if you live side by side? This is a performance about familial relations, about ties between different generations, about the influence of one Big Event on lives of many people.
The show premiered in October, 2014 and toured in Skåne (Riksteatern) and abroad in 2015. It received the audience choice award at the Baltic House Festival (St. Petersburg, Russia) in 2015.
Actors: Matthias Thorbjörnsson & Elias Faingersh
Director: Pelle Öhlund
Scenography/video art – Signe Korgh
Light and sound design – Jonas Åkesson
Composer: Elias Faingersh
Research: Keren Klimovsky
Playwright: Keren Klimovsky & Maria Reihs
Translation: Maria Reihs
With support from: Kultur i Skåne, Kulturrådet